Dynamics of HIV Risk Behavior: A Daily Process Approach

描述（由申请人提供）：拟议研究的目的是使用日常过程方法来了解HIV阳性南非个体中与HIV风险行为相关的社会心理和社会认知因素。研究的第一阶段将包括开发、试点测试和完善结构化的日常日记，以评估压力、情感状态、应对、社会认知因素、物质使用和艾滋病毒风险行为。该日记将用于收集140名HIV阳性个体6周内的每日数据。多层模型将用于测试压力和艾滋病毒风险行为之间的关联，并探索这种关系如何在艾滋病毒阳性个体的日常生活中展开的可能机制。这将有助于了解日常压力事件和个人对这些事件的反应最终如何影响艾滋病毒风险行为。这项研究是第一次研究日常压力事件作为与HIV风险行为相关的因素的作用，并测量接近实时的HIV风险行为的预测因素。这些发现可能为干预南非HIV阳性个体和预防HIV阴性个体进一步感染HIV提供了有效的策略。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The purpose of the proposed research is to use a daily process approach to understand the psychosocial and social cognitive factors related to HIV risk behavior among HIV positive South African individuals. The first phase of the research will involve developing, pilot testing, and refining a structured daily diary to assess stress, affective states, coping, social cognitive factors, substance use, and HIV risk behavior. This diary will be used to collect daily data for 6-weeks from 140 HIV positive individuals. Multilevel Modeling will be utilized to test the proposed association between stress and HIV risk behavior and explore possible mechanisms as to how such a relationship may unfold in HIV positive individuals daily lives. This will result in an understanding of how stressful daily events and an individual's responses to these events ultimately affect HIV risk behavior. This research represents one of the first studies to examine the role of daily stressful events as factor related to HIV risk behavior, and to measure predictors of HIV risk behavior close to real-time. These findings may suggest effective strategies to intervene with HIV positive individuals and to prevent further HIV infections among HIV negative individuals in South Africa.